SingleHop, a global provider of on-demand private cloud and managed hosting, today announced the official launch of its AWS managed services offering - Service First Support for Amazon Web Services. The fully managed solution is the first to offer architecture, management and optimization of environments in the AWS cloud based on the availability, performance and security needs of individual applications.

"Time-constrained IT departments are adopting AWS in large numbers, only to find they first have to master a new set of technical capabilities before they can achieve the desired performance and efficiency gains for their applications,"said Zak Boca, CEO of SingleHop. "Our managed AWS customers avoid this situation entirely by leveraging our extensive automation and AWS-certified engineering team to manage deployments for them. They want the best vehicle to drive their applications, but they don't have the resources or desire to build and maintain the vehicle themselves."

Application-Driven Infrastructure Management for AWS Cloud

Seventy-one percent of businesses already use or plan to use cloud services by year-end 2017, but concerns around cloud security, lack of internal expertise, and challenges around application integration remain inhibitors to public cloud adoption for some, according to research from Gartner, Inc.

Service First Support for AWS delivers an easier, safer, more cost effective way for businesses to run their applications in the AWS cloud by addressing the aforementioned concerns head-on in four key areas:

Architecture, design and migration support

Monitoring, response and troubleshooting

Optimization for availability, performance and cost control

Cloud security based on AWS best practices

"The managed third party cloud market continues to develop, and SingleHop is on a short list of service providers that now have capabilities for both the AWS and Azure clouds," stated Philbert Shih, Managing Director of Structure Research. "The offerings that have come to market so far take an infrastructure-centric approach that's focused on optimization. SingleHop is taking a different angle. It is approaching customers from the application level and coming in with the mindset of moving them to cloud if it makes sense, but architecting and making a recommendation based on the specific needs of the application."

Service First Support for AWS customers receive monthly, application-specific report cards, enabling focused optimization tactics and native support for hybrid solutions that integrate other forms of infrastructure, such as bare metal or hybrid cloud solutions.

Soft-launched early this year, Service First Support for AWS is resonating with SMB IT departments whose strategies emphasize new project development over infrastructure upkeep.

"We chose SingleHop's Managed AWS Solution for Tidal Commerce's cloud so our team could focus on building products and supporting our customers instead of spending those resources wrestling with infrastructure," said Mark Spirek, Chief Technology of Tidal Commerce. "Knowing that SingleHop's certified AWS experts architected a solution custom to our applications gives us peace of mind."